


Next Time

by livethekind



Series: Timeslight [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Kidswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-13 02:57:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livethekind/pseuds/livethekind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And once, you think, you had a gun, but this is not that universe and you are not the same girl and oh, what it must be like to live.</p>
<p>( What about my own fate? )</p>
            </blockquote>





	Next Time

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Dave/Jade Collaboration Round of the HSO.

> Dave Egbert: kiss the girl.

  


 

 

No. You can't.

  
> Dave: become the Dave five minutes ago.  


It's chilly on the Land of Frost and Light; Jade never did complete her land's quests, you think -- and it shows, the delicate blades of wintery glass crunching underneath your shoes. Supposedly she was to be the light, shine into the darkness of the glass caverns you can see just under your feet. But she can't do that now. Remembering that fact -- no, _realizing_ that fact -- has left you with an uncomfortable knot in the pit of your stomach. You walk faster, because you should have been there minutes ago. She's getting away from you -- and isn't that really how your relationship was defined? Jade would do something, you'd reach up to match her. And then she'd be gone again, always two steps ahead, two skips or a hop or a somersault or a book's length away. You can never hope to match her proclivity for jumping from one thing to the next (she's very smart, almost as pretty, it's an idle thought) so you follow after her, walking in her footsteps.

But she's not walking any more.

It's not hard to find her; the impact of her body with the surface of her world shattered glass and left a hole in the earth. So you simply float down into it, taking care to avoid any sharp edges. Jade's at the bottom, and whatever power that Skaia gave her is slowly ebbing away, leaving her body flickering in and out of a permanently bright state. She's speared through the middle -- Jack Noir's work, no doubt, that fucking monster. You're not even sure how this happened; you stop inches away from her, hands clenched in the fabric of your cape before realizing that you need to help her -- somehow -- you need to make her live.

You kneel on the broken glass and pick her limp body up into your arms.

> Dave: become the past Jade that goes…well uh. You don't really know.

 

dave  
its called litebrite :)

You are **JADE LALONDE** , and for thirteen years you have been told that you can't change fate. It is something that's been repeated over and over, like a mantra -- through every one of your fairy tales the message has been screamed at you, and every time your mother fended you off with her drunken slurs and vacuum cleaner. _You can't change fate, Jade_ , it's been echoing in your ears repeatedly, enough to make you scream. So you tore out the pages of your books, replaced them with stories of your own: little girls who didn't get eaten by wolves but instead shot them down, boys and girls who weren't eaten by witches but instead brought her to justice. Men and women whose deaths you thought weren't justified were suddenly brought back to life in your own purple, scrawly handwriting. Every dot and line made you feel better, a little bit, but there was still something about it that didn't sit well with you.

_What about my own fate?_

GG: well?  
GG: if you are going to be a spooky fortune teller then i think the least you could do is give me some real answers  
GG: of the concrete variety, please  
GG: i need to know what to do in order to win! i have to help my friends  
AA: Im sorry jade but y0u kn0w i cant d0 That…  
AA: But here is what i d0 Kn0w:  
AA: Y0u are g0ing t0 c0mpletely white 0ut the Screen!  
AA: It is terrifying and at the same time i w0nder h0w y0u manage t0 d0 It.  
AA: If y0u find 0ut,  
AA: Please tell Me?  
GG: i have no idea what you are talking about….  
GG: but sure, i can promise that  
GG: dont worry aradia i am sure that it is just a side effect of some sort of sburb shenanigans!  
AA: I think it might be s0mething a little m0re malev0lent but whatever y0u Say.  
AA: 0h…..0ne m0re Thing.  
AA: I hesitate t0 tell y0u this….  
GG: spit it out!  
AA: Thats Gr0ss!  
GG: not literally……  
AA: 0h.  
AA: Well anyway…  
AA: Y0u are D00med.  
GG: ...........  
GG: what?  
AA: Its just like i Said.  
AA: Unfortunately thr0ugh the acti0ns taken by s0me 0f y0ur m0re nefari0us party Members  
AA: Y0u are all d00med fr0m the Start.  
AA: Im s0 s0rry :(

No.

You are going to change it.

Rose has always warned you not to get too close to the clouds while your satellite on Prospit crosses into the atmosphere of Skaia; her warnings were ominous but vague, leaving you with a sense of distrust and more questions than she could answer. Now, you are sure that it is exactly what you need to do in order to win this game.

You are the Witch of Light; Aradia already informed you of the disastrous consequences of her own Light player in their session -- a girl who could divvy up the fortune of others in ways she saw more fitting -- but you see no reason why dire circumstances should not be met with dire reactions. So you go to sleep; it is the first time you have ever done so willingly that you can remember, aside from merging with your doomed self. You don't like the clouds, but now you are going to do something unprecedented.

You are going to fly into them and use their visions. Not thieving, not really -- after all, you think, Witches aren't bad people all of the time. You have every intention of borrowing, and you say as much to the worried prospitians who stare at you as you fly closer to the planet. _Get inside!_ they call, but their voices are weak and the throb of your heart is in your ears, so you are deaf to their pleas, and eventually they stop trying. No one does this, you think. You are breaking the session's rules one by one.

The seconds count down almost in agony. _five...four...._ the visions are starting, but instead of viewing them, you want to become them. Your hands reach out-- _three... please, just let me use this magic....what good is being a Witch of Light if i cant even change my fate?_ \-- and there's a blast of light from your hands, clouds are surrounding you -- _two... i need more, i can't help them with this, i have to be stronger!_ \------

And suddenly it's _one!_ and you are not watching a picture show because the lights on Skaia have gone out, the clouds completely dark around you. If you were anyone else right now, on any other planet, your eyes would be turned to the suddenly darkened sky, so bare without the light of Skaia to connect you all. If you were Dave Egbert, you would be suddenly yelling out the name JADE, dropping to your knees to clutch the now lifeless, darkened body that once held the Light of his best friend. But you are not.

You are the Light. The only Light.

You cannot remember your name -- jade harlalstribertmarymegicaptokat \-- the worlds are too many, too infinite, and you have lived too many lifetimes in one moment to ever fully comprehend who it was you were or what you have become. The visions are no longer in the clouds but in your being -- you see flashes of death on the tips of your fingers, children being born in a lab on your wrist and the gently touch of two people's lips when you feel what once, you think, might have been your cheek. There is too much to take in, so you simply _exist_ for a moment -- and in that moment you see yourself in so many different universes -- a dog, a boy who is not, a little girl on an island, a girl triumphant in her victory or failing so fast that you do not realize it -- that you know that this is not the end. Even if you fail -- and you know you will, now, you see it, etched in the wrinkles of your dress and the hems of your sleeves and every breath -- you will continue.

But now you must make your fate. Finding Jack Noir is easy -- and it feels like only a second but really it must have been minutes, maybe hours (maybe eternities) before you were actually in front of him, screwdrivers drawn (and once, you think, you had a gun, but this is not that universe and you are not the same girl and oh, what it must be like to _live_ ). The fight feels like an instant to you, the girl who is living forever at once, and what you do not know is that your Light is so bright that the entire universe can see it. Prospitians quiver, Dersites screech and fall into their houses to escape the shadowless void you have created. But Jack Noir stands against you, the unbeatable monster. He is everything you and your friends ever wanted to create: the Jedi figurine from Dave, the mechanical witch from you, the bird with a flail through his heart from John. And of course, Rose's creation, her Eldritch Horror, the plant with a living, breathing consciousness, fully capable of destroying you all with the raising of its voice. Topped off with Becquerel and he was unbeatable, a writhing mass of plant, machine, bird and jedi dog. He raises his flail and you raise your screwdriver, and the battle begins.

You do not remember most of it -- and yet, at the same time, you do. In an instant he has won; but at the same time, there are other lives, other places, where he has lost. As the Light, you can't remember -- what did you call it? litebrite? what did that mean? -- but you know you're falling, hard and fast, Light and visions trailing from your body as you plummet back towards LOFAL. There's a sickening crunch -- what is that? red? that's you, that is coming from you -- and you hear yourself scream before the Light is fading, your vision clearing into a view of the sky as it slowly relights itself after your borrowing, your magic spell. But not for long; your eyes close as you begin to fade again, and you slip into sleep.

> Be Dave.

You know you can't revive her. Her body dropped to the ground, as lifeless as the still-flickering one you held in your hands right now. Whatever she did, whatever bargain she made with her own life, she lost it. And even the Windy Thing couldn't really save her -- what good was it? you want to scream. _What good is a damn sword of Breath when I can't even save my friends? What kind of knight am I?_

The Light is gone.  
She's gone.

You gently sit her down again, covering your face with your hands.

 

And you cry.

 

When it's over -- when there are no more tears to be shed -- you pull away from her, leaving her body for the frosted glass, the Light which she never managed to restore. You take her strife specibus -- it's the only thing you can think of that could possibly come close to doing what you need to in order to fix this. After all, it was Jade that had the Weapons; Jade's Weapons that could kill the world in an instant, the weapons she loved, the ones she died with. And you take her headset too, to remember her. You ignore the messages on it and start typing one to someone who is so hard to reach these days, in the hopes that he listens, just one last time.

TG: john are you there  
TG: john youve gotta answer me this is fucking serious just answer the im screen i dont even care which john answers right now  
GT: yeah ok you have got a john. what is up my bromio i'm in the middle of some serious cash heists i don't have time for lame jedi jokes.  
TG: shes dead  
GT: what.  
GT: no. who? what are you talking about?  
TG: jade shes gone  
GT: shit.  
GT: the sky?  
TG: yeah she did something  
TG: i think she traded her life to try and fix this it didnt work  
TG: she lost i saw it  
TG: she took on jack and  
TG: fuck  
GT: fuck.  
GT: we have to do it.  
GT: the scratch.  
TG: yeah i know we do i have her specibus i just  
TG: i didnt think we would have to die  
TG: i thought this would be fun  
GT: me too egbert.  
GT: dave.  
GT: whatever.  
TG: im going to fix this its the only thing i can do  
TG: you tell rose ok  
GT: you're a hero bro.  
TG: no  
TG: what kind of hero cant even save his friends?

There's silence. Radio static. You stand in the snow that is starting to fall on Jade's land and stare at the screen, unable to do anything else.

GT: next time.  
GT: next time we're going to win.  
GT: she'll win.  
GT: shit.  
TG: yeah  
TG: next time we are going to shove it in his fucking face  
TG: and next time well win


End file.
